Behaviour of reinforced concrete structures subjected to seismic impact

Abstract

During various recent earthquakes impact between adjacent buildings became the cause of the total or partial structural collapse. The analysis of impact effects, due to seismic actions, on the structural behaviour of different constructions was carried out and presented in this paper. The work focuses on the analysis of impact between different concrete structures of different shapes and dynamic behaviour, with various gap sizes, and aims to artificially reproduce the occurrence of impact between adjacent buildings and understand which conditions may cause structural damage and eventually collapse. Influences of different factors on impact are analysed: buildings’ height, the seismic gap size and the behaviour factor q.